ON THE PRESENT LIMITS OF PRESENTISM
ON THE PRESENT LIMITS OF PRESENTISM

Summary/Abstract: "Presentism is one of the major metaphysical theories about the reality of moments of time. Presentism, contrary to eternalism, states that the present moment has a special ontological status, namely the status that qualifies the real existence. Presentists also usually claim that presentism, in contrast to eternalism, is compatible with our commonsense attitudes regarding existence in time and our common experience of temporality. This study is focused on a critical evaluation of the supposed compatibility of presentism with the rationality of our common experience of time. The first part of the study analyzes the crucial differences between the conceptual presupposition of presentism about the passage of time and our actual experience of the passage of time. The second part of the study scrutinizes the essential disparities among the theoretical notion of the present moment in presentism and the present moment in our experiential reality. Thus, this study will conclude that presentism doesn’t appear to be conservatively compatible with our experience of time, and therefore the preference of presentism, merely by the merits of commonsense, doesn’t seem to follow."

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